Historically, public opinion polls have been used in the United States to assess the opinions of the population on a given issue, individual, or group. Such polls have also been widely used to determine public or group sentiment regarding companies, products, potential future products, and the like. A properly-formulated poll provides a snapshot of the content, intensity, and consistency of opinion for a target group. Polls have been used to capture the opinions of large groups, such as likely United States voters, medium-sized groups such as “U.S. Republican voters,” and small groups such as “Democratic voters living in Austin, Tex.” Public opinion polling can identify individual and group desires, motivations, and opinions on issues such as specific topics, individuals, political parties, and philosophical leanings.
The results of an individual poll comprise survey responses from individuals who participated in the poll and statistical analyses of the survey responses of some or all of the participating individuals. These statistical analyses are commonly known as a poll's “results.” Once collected, polling information is widely used by news organizations, political campaigns, and businesses for a variety of purposes including product planning, targeted advertising and, in the case of political polls, shaping the tenor of a candidate's political platform in order to better connect with potential voters. Poll results, in particular political poll results, may also reported to the public at large.
Many methods of conducting public opinion polls are time-intensive, costly, and inefficient because the location of suitable poll respondents willing to participate and complete the poll can be problematic. For example, telephone polling has traditionally been used to perform political polling. Telephone polling has a very large nonresponse bias because polling calls are missed, many individuals do not answer calls from unknown telephone numbers and, of the individuals that do answer the initial call, many refuse to complete the survey. Failed attempts vastly outnumber successful interviews of individuals for a given poll. In order to gather 1,200 complete responses, it is not uncommon for 40,000 phone calls to be placed—a 3% return rate.
Polling is one approach to gathering information about individual and group behavior. Other approaches include observation of group and individual purchasing habits, Internet browsing habits, and the like. Information about individual and group behavior is routinely collected by a variety of sources.
Given the foregoing, what is needed are systems, methods, and computer program products which collect information from individuals and groups, and analyze the collected data in order to generate actionable results. Additionally, systems, methods, and computer program products are needed which collect information and construct profiles indicating preferences of an individual or group, based on the information collected.
Systems, methods, and computer program products are also needed which aggregate information collected about individuals and groups and analyzes such information in order to generate profiles indicating interest in a variety of topics, products, and services. In particular, analysis of such information, which is updated as new information is collected, is needed. Additionally, facilitating analysis of what factors indicate an individual or group will behave in a certain way (e.g., vote Republican, buy a new computer) is needed.